In English, the passive voice is marked by a subject that is followed by a stative verb complemented by a past participle . For example:
35-584: (Redirected from Having ) [REDACTED] Look up have or having in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Have or having may refer to: the concept of ownership any concept of possession the English verb "to have " is used: to express possession linguistically , in a broad sense as an auxiliary verb in constructions such as have something done Having (album) ,
70-978: A 2006 album by the band Trespassers William Having (SQL) , a clause in the SQL programming-language Having (inlet) , on Rügen island in Germany HAVE, a United States military code-word designating projects developed by the Air Force Systems Command , such as the Lockheed Have Blue Have , a grammatically incorrect variation of the Latin salute Ave Peter Have , Danish politician Stefan Haves , American clown and director See also [ edit ] Has (disambiguation) Had (disambiguation) All pages with titles beginning with Have All pages with titles beginning with Having Topics referred to by
105-423: A broad sense as an auxiliary verb in constructions such as have something done Having (album) , a 2006 album by the band Trespassers William Having (SQL) , a clause in the SQL programming-language Having (inlet) , on Rügen island in Germany HAVE, a United States military code-word designating projects developed by the Air Force Systems Command , such as the Lockheed Have Blue Have ,
140-478: A columnist for The Boston Globe , said that the passive voice does have its uses, and that "all good writers use the passive voice." Passive writing is not necessarily slack and indirect. Many famously vigorous passages use the passive voice, as in these examples with the passive verbs italicized: While Strunk and White , in The Elements of Style , encourage use of the active voice, they also state that
175-439: A form of the verb be (or sometimes get ) is used as an auxiliary together with the past participle of a transitive verb ; that verb is missing its direct object , and the patient of the action (that which would be denoted by the direct object of the verb in an active clause) is denoted instead by the subject of the clause. For example, the active clause: contains threw as a transitive verb with John as its subject and
210-446: A grammatically incorrect variation of the Latin salute Ave Peter Have , Danish politician Stefan Haves , American clown and director See also [ edit ] Has (disambiguation) Had (disambiguation) All pages with titles beginning with Have All pages with titles beginning with Having Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with
245-437: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages have [REDACTED] Look up have or having in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Have or having may refer to: the concept of ownership any concept of possession the English verb "to have " is used: to express possession linguistically , in
280-418: Is more muscular, direct, and succinct, passive voice flabbier, more indirect, and wordier. If you want your words to seem impersonal, indirect, and noncommittal, passive is the choice, but otherwise, active voice is almost invariably likely to prove more effective. Use of the passive is more prevalent in scientific writing, but publishers of some scientific publications, such as Nature , Science and
315-419: Is not a valid way of identifying the passive, and many other grammatical constructions can be used to accomplish this. Not every expression that serves to take focus away from the performer of an action is an instance of passive voice. For instance, "There were mistakes" and "Mistakes occurred" are both in the active voice. Occasionally, authors express recommendations about use of the passive unclearly or misapply
350-407: Is not an undesirable feature limited to bad writing, it's a useful construction often needed for clear expression, and every good writer uses it." Despite criticism that the passive can be used to hide responsibility by omitting the agent, the passive can also be used to emphasize the agent. Writers have preferred placing the agent at the end of a clause or sentence to give it greater emphasis, as in
385-611: The IEEE , explicitly encourage their authors to use active voice. The principal criticism against the passive voice is its potential for evasion of responsibility. This is because a passive clause may be used to omit the agent even where it is important: Krista Ratcliffe, a professor at Marquette University, notes the use of passives as an example of the role of grammar as "... ...a link between words and magical conjuring ...: passive voice mystifies accountability by erasing who or what performs an action ..." Jan Freeman,
SECTION 10
#1732779809313420-420: The active voice yield: Our troops defeated the enemy. Brutus stabbed Caesar. The English passive voice typically involves forms of the verbs to be or to get followed by a passive participle as the subject complement —sometimes referred to as a passive verb . English allows a number of additional passive constructions that are not possible in many other languages with analogous passive formations to
455-401: The past participle of the verb denoting the action. The agent (the doer of the action) may be specified using a prepositional phrase with the preposition by, but this is optional. It can be used in a number of different grammatical contexts; for instance, in declarative, interrogative, and imperative clauses: Though the passive can be used for the purpose of concealing the agent, this
490-444: The above. A sentence's indirect object may be promoted to the subject position—e.g. Tom was given a bag . Similarly, the complement of a preposition may be promoted, leaving a stranded preposition —e.g. Sue was operated on . The English passive voice is used less often than the active voice, but frequency varies according to the writer's style and the given field of writing. Contemporary style guides discourage excessive use of
525-547: The active voice, eschewing the stationary passive, with its little auxiliary its's [ sic ] and was's , and its participles getting into the light of your adjectives, which should be few. For, as a rough law, by his use of the straight verb and by his economy of adjectives you can tell a man's style, if it be masculine or neuter, writing or 'composition'. Two years later, in the original 1918 edition of The Elements of Style , Cornell University Professor of English William Strunk, Jr. warned against excessive use of
560-623: The active voice, however, makes for forcible writing. This is true not only in narrative concerned principally with action, but in writing of any kind. Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is or could be heard . In 1926, in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage , Henry Watson Fowler recommended against transforming active voice forms into passive voice forms, because doing so "... ...sometimes leads to bad grammar, false idiom , or clumsiness." In 1946, in
595-423: The active voice. Although the speaker may be using words in a manner that diverts responsibility from him, this is not being accomplished by use of passive voice. The passive voice can be used without referring to the agent of an action; it may therefore be used when the agent is unknown or unimportant, or the speaker does not wish to mention the agent. The last sentence illustrates a frequently criticized use of
630-409: The advantages of the active voice, but gives the following examples of where the passive is preferred: Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage recommends the passive voice when identifying the object (receiver) of the action is more important than the subject (agent), and when the agent is unknown, unimportant, or not worth mentioning: The linguist Geoffrey Pullum writes that "The passive
665-406: The ball as its direct object. If we recast the verb in the passive voice ( was thrown ), then the ball becomes the subject (it is "promoted" to the subject position) and John disappears: The original subject (the agent ) can optionally be re-inserted using the preposition by . The above example uses the verb be (in the past tense form was ) to make the passive. It is often possible to use
700-568: The end of a clause: In some situations, the passive may be used so that the most dramatic word or the punchline appears at the end of the sentence. Many language critics and language-usage manuals discourage use of the passive voice. This advice is not usually found in older guides, emerging only in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1916, the British writer Arthur Quiller-Couch criticized this grammatical voice: Generally, use transitive verbs , that strike their object; and use them in
735-505: The essay " Politics and the English Language ", George Orwell recommended the active voice as an elementary principle of composition: "Never use the passive where you can use the active." The Columbia Guide to Standard American English states that: Active voice makes subjects do something (to something); passive voice permits subjects to have something done to them (by someone or something). Some argue that active voice
SECTION 20
#1732779809313770-474: The examples given in the previous section: Agentless passives were once common in scientific writing , where the agent may be irrelevant, although at least one publisher considers this a "fading practice": The passive voice is used more frequently in scientific writing than in other prose, where it is relatively rare. A statistical study of a variety of periodicals found a maximum incidence of 13 percent passive constructions. Despite Orwell's advice to avoid
805-536: The passive is often useful and sometimes preferable, even necessary, the choice of active or passive depending, for instance, on the topic of the sentence. Another advisor, Joseph M. Williams , who has written several books on style, states with greater clarity that the passive is often the better choice. According to Williams, the choice between active and passive depends on the answers to three questions: Bryan A. Garner , in Garner's Modern English Usage , stresses
840-432: The passive voice but generally consider it to be acceptable in certain situations, such as when the patient is the topic of the sentence, when the agent is unimportant and therefore omitted, or when the agent is placed near the end of a sentence as a means of emphasis. The passive voice is a specific grammatical construction. The essential components, in English, are a form of the stative verb be (or sometimes get ) and
875-404: The passive voice: The active voice is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive ... This rule does not, of course, mean that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice, which is frequently convenient and sometimes necessary ... The need to make a particular word the subject of the sentence will often ... determine which voice is to be used. The habitual use of
910-422: The passive, as the evasion of responsibility by failure to mention the agent (which may even be the speaker themselves). Nonetheless, the passive voice can be complemented by an element that identifies the agent, usually via a by -phrase that is intended to emphasize the agent. For example: In more technical terms, such uses can be expected in sentences where the agent is the focus ( comment , rheme ), while
945-425: The passive, his Politics and the English Language employs passive voice for about 20 percent of its constructions. The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English gives the following rough frequencies per million words: In academic prose, passives make up roughly 25% of all finite clauses, 15% in news, less in fiction, and even less in conversation. In the most commonly considered type of passive clause,
980-409: The patient (the undergoer of the action) is the topic or theme (see Topic–comment ). There is a tendency for sentences to be formulated so as to place the focus at the end, which can motivate the choice of active or passive voice: Similarly, the passive may be used because the noun phrase denoting the agent is a long one (containing many modifiers ) since it is convenient to place such phrases at
1015-418: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Have . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Have&oldid=1193613244 " Categories : Disambiguation pages Verbs Hidden categories: Short description
1050-481: The scheme." As he read this, he betrayed no sense of how absurd it was to use the passive voice in regard to his scheme, as if it were a spell of bad weather that had descended on him ... In most of the rest of the statement, one not only heard the aggrieved passive voice , but felt the hand of a lawyer: "To the best of my recollection, my fraud began in the early nineteen-nineties." The intransitive verbs would end and began are in fact ergative verbs in
1085-504: The term "passive voice" to include sentences of this type. An example of this incorrect usage can be found in the following extract from an article from The New Yorker about Bernard Madoff (bolding and italics added; bold text indicates the verbs misidentified as passive voice): Two sentences later, Madoff said, "When I began the Ponzi scheme, I believed it would end shortly, and I would be able to extricate myself, and my clients, from
Have - Misplaced Pages Continue
1120-502: The title Have . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Have&oldid=1193613244 " Categories : Disambiguation pages Verbs Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages English passive voice#Additional passive constructions The enemy
1155-419: The verb be in progressive aspect , which does not normally occur when be is used as a simple copula . Some examples: Unlike some other languages, English also allows passive clauses in which an indirect object , rather than a direct object, is promoted to the subject. For example: In the active form, gave is the verb; John is its subject, Mary its indirect object, and a book its direct object. In
1190-465: The verb get as an alternative (possibly with slightly different meaning); for example, the active sentence "The ball hit Bob" may be recast in either of the following forms: The auxiliary verb of the passive voice ( be or get ) may appear in any combination of tense, aspect and mood , and can also appear in non-finite form (infinitive, participle or gerund). See the article on English verb forms for more information. Notice that this includes use of
1225-443: Was defeated. Caesar was stabbed. The recipient of a sentence's action is referred to as the patient . In sentences using the active voice, the subject is the performer of the action—referred to as the agent . Above, the agent is omitted entirely, but it may also be included adjunctively while maintaining the passive voice: The enemy was defeated by our troops . Caesar was stabbed by Brutus . The initial examples rewritten in
#312687